The present invention relates to embroidering machines in general and, in particular, to a new and useful embroidering machine, wherein, in order to effect a thread change, a needle and thread lever associated with the needle are selected from a plurality of needles and thread levers equipped with different threads and coupled with a drive of the embroidering machine.
In a known embroidering machine, according to U.S. Pat. No. 3,884,165, the needle bars and the associated thread levers of a needle group are mounted in a frame-type carrier which brings the selected needle bar and the associated thread lever in front of a stationary drive by displacing the carrier for the purpose of a thread change. The known arrangement requires a considerable amount of space in view of the necessity of accommodating the needle bars and the thread levers in a carrier and particularly because of the required lateral displaceability of the carrier, and thus, also requires considerable expenditures for carrying out the displacement of the carrier.
Embroidering machines are also known where only a single stirrup type thread lever with a number of thread eyes corresponding to the number of needles of this group are provided in each needle group. This arrangement has the disadvantage that the needles which are not involved in the embroidering process are threaded out by the vibrations of the thread and must be threaded in again at the next change of threads. In addition, the same parts of the threads which are not selected for embroidering are always pulled through the thread eyes of the thread levers during the vibration of the thread layer, so that they are unnecessarily stressed for wear.